During the established 1954 Act, plans for "independent television" to consist of two or more channels in a given area were discussed its first inception, where ways of allowing the component companies to compete directly with one another were considered.
By 1968, the ITA considered this sufficiently likely that the new franchises were awarded for the next ten-year period they included a clause that allowed the licence to be revoked and reconsidered if a fourth UHF network became a reality.
This led to acts of civil disobedience including refusals to pay the television licence fee, and sit-ins used for both the BBC and HTV studios with some attacks on various transmitters for the Welsh-speaking areas.
Later on 13 November of that year, the Broadcasting Act paves its way for leading process to create the new fourth television service as a subsidiary, with its subscription will be levied on the ITV regional companies to pay for this channel whether they selling airtime in return.
It was funded by ITV and then had a substantial amount of content produced by the major companies until 31 December 1992: On 1 January 1993, Channel 4 became an independent statutory corporation and under the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990 was now also allowed to sell its own airtime.